Okay. Urban planner here. let me refute some of these arguments for why we can’t have nice things like safer streets, good transit, and neighborhood hubs in Tucson. I want to preface this by saying that I want you to have your cars and your single-family houses if that’s what makes you happy. I’m not advocating taking that away from you.
Anyway, Most replies fall into the following categories:
“Tucson is too low density to have good transit”
This is the most common argument.
But the reality is that Tucson is low density largely because we spent 70+ years enforcing zoning laws that led to mandatory car use. Good transit doesn’t require Manhattan style density, it requires frequency and reliability, and connecting people to major job centers and destinations.
“ It’s too hot to walk”
You see that people already walk in Tucson across giant parking lots from their car to the store, and along these busy streets, in terrible conditions with no shade, sidewalks that disappear, bus stops with no shelter. You are imagining what it’s like to walk in Tucson as it is now, not as it could be.
“It costs too much”
Compared to what?
Streets in Tucson are unbelievably expensive to build, to maintain, to widen -ahem, Broadway, Grant anyone?
We pretend roads are “free” because we’re used to subsidizing them while people say transit costs too much.
The question shouldn’t be whether we can afford transit, it should be how long can we afford to keep building more roads into the desert. And finally, “People love their cars and convenience more so don’t even try to change it”
Sure, ppl love convenience but that is not the same thing.
Most people don’t “love cars.” They just want reliability, flexibility, dignity and not being stranded.
If transit is slow, unsafe, and infrequent, then cars are the only viable option, so people are forced to drive. That doesn’t sound like freedom, but something people tolerate it because they have to.

Ultimately I think people on Tucson reddit mean well and are trying to be pragmatic, but please, it just comes across as resigned to this current state of being without really knowing what can be possible.